 Engaging Millennials and the Gen Zs in the workplace, how to harness their talents in building corporate Nigeria. All right, so let me start by quoting a theory put forward as captured in a report called The Greatest Generation Definition. The American generations covered in the theory are the greatest, we call one the greatest generation born circa 1901 to 1924. One generation circa 1925 to 1945, baby boomers circa 1946 to 1964, generation X circa 1965 to 1985, and then generation Y or millennial generation circa 1985 to 2000. Please note that circa is a Latin word meaning about or around or approximately, so you can just replace that. Also my today's advocacy is on the Millennials and the Generation Z or Gen Z, according to an article published by Journal of Applied Leadership and the Management entitled Comparing Generation X and Generation Y on their preferred emotional leadership style. Generation Y often referred to as Millennials, Nexus or Next Generation, happened to be the youngest generation in the current workforce before the influx of a new breed called Generation Z or Gen Z. I refer to another article titled Millennials versus Gen Z, Key Differences in the Workplace and published by Adeko USA and I quote, a member of Gen Z is anyone born between 1996 and the early need 2000s, 2000s or and the end date can actually vary depending on the source. Next is a report published by Cassasa on Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z. Gen Z, birth years span from 1997 to 2012, which is clearly after 1996. A flurry of potential labels and the nicknames have been appearing, including Gen Tech or Post Millennials, I Generation, Gen Wi-Fi, Homeland Generation and Zoomers. Now Generation Z therefore are the post millennial generation. It is estimated that 50% of the current Nigerian workforce are Millennials and even Gen Z in most tech firms. Now the big thing is that managing them may become one of the most challenging tasks in today's workplaces. Older managers, many of whom are baby boomers who were born between 1946 and 1965 and Gen X who were people born between 1965 or 1966 to 1981 or 1985, depending on the source. They perceive Millennials as arrogant, insubordinate, impatient, too inquisitive, lazy, careless and unorganized. Others believe they have an entitlement mentality. They hate to be coached or worse, they hate to be bossed around. They have title, little or no, regard for rules and policies and are generally unsteady. Now despite their both stated perception, Millennials can be an asset rather than an ally ability. So the big question of national importance on the mind of most organizations should be post COVID-19, how can corporate Nigeria harness the talents embedded in Millennials and Gen Zs? I will address this from several touch points. Number one, culture. Culture, they say it's strategy for breakfast. So if you do not get Millennials and Gen Zs to buy into the corporate culture, then every strategy you have will fall flat. Culture needs to stop having mythical or esoteric feelings. The Millennials must be able to associate with the prevalent culture and see how they can align with it as future leaders. The culture bandwidth must be extended to include collaboration, integration, experimentation, growth, openness, inclusion, diversity, teamwork, et cetera. Number two, leadership. In the absence of millennial role models, senior management must be intentional about embodying certain critical values like innovation, flexibility, belongingness, empathy, job rotation, openness, and constructive feedback, including digital learning, humanity, inspiring trust, sense of accomplishment, adaptation to change, passion for learning, continuous engagement, respect for the individual, et cetera. Can corporate Nigeria come up with a realistic career building plan, a leadership development plan that transform these set of workers into transformational, transgenerational leaders? The third point I have here is collaborative vision casting. Up until now, vision casting has been the exclusive preserve of top management. However, to prevent corporate from becoming dinosaurs, Millennials must be involved in big picture thinking by making sure that they understand corporate, cultural leadership and the vision. I'm just going to take it right from where you... Let's talk Millennials. Yeah, let's talk for my Millennials. The cultural part is the one that got me. Any culture that is outdated, we will replace with efficiency and effectiveness. We do not care because most of these organizations have outdated culture that is not contributing anything to the KPIs we need to be tracking. We don't care. Take it back home. Leave it in your family house. We do not care. And Genesis do not care. They will not care. I believe Millennials will still do it in a respectful way. And I'll try to tell you, I don't care. Exactly. I feel like outdated cultures in workplaces need to go out, bring in more Millennials, bring in Genesis. But they will have that with the Genesis because I was here having this conversation. This is not your Genesis case. It's just to see the Millennials being on Genesis case. Because they will have that with those ones is that they are very, very touchy and they are very, very outspoken here. They are very outspoken and very touchy. If the Genesis will tell you, I can't come to work today, I'm mentally down. I'm emotionally resilient. They are so very, very touchy. So I'm not going to be speaking much on them because we have experienced Genesis at our workplaces. I'll say to the Millennials for now because yeah. That's sort of like a refreshing view to hear from like Millennials. Exactly. But I think you really drew on some really interesting points. So for me, I get confused by all these gen X, gen Y, gen Y. I don't think like that. Now the person in front of me actually looks like that. So the thing is that with the younger ones, I don't know what gen, but they are younger than me. Yeah. Always there has, we have to train them in etiquette. Always. If you're running late, call that you're running late. Be on time. Those basic things, how to write, you know, an email. We don't write letters. How do you write an email? How do you construct? So there's some really basic things that really we've had to teach every person in their 20s that we've worked with. And that isn't their fault. That's the fault of our educational system. Okay. But those are things that I notice in the younger generation. Now, please, we should get rid of the old, old, old ways because let's say what it is. Our youth are not lazy. But if we have 40%, I think unemployment in this country, who do you think it's hitting? What do you expect them to be doing? What jobs are available for them? So they're the ones going out, risking it all, starting new businesses, hustling, doing all that because the country has not provided anything for them. So me, I'm for the younger ones, and I would never consider them lazy. What's unfortunate is, again, they're not really valued for the input that they're putting because the president, God bless him, can wake up one morning and ban their source of income. And yet you want to say they're lazy, but they're hustling. They're using the technology, the new technologies that are at hand to build a sustainable environment for themselves and their colleagues. And in one strike, someone can wake up and decide it's not done. But you haven't put anything in place for them. So for me, I don't look at it as there's something wrong with it. All of us have our issues, every generation, whatever generation you pick. The issue is that, yes, we do have to teach them some certain cultures that must continue. But we need to allow them the space to be able to eat. Because we haven't put anything in place. They've been robbed, literally robbed of their future. But yet they're still hopeful, yet they're still trying, yet they're still positive. So we need to support them in any way we can. And of course, we have to let them know when they're doing right. I think that it's been able to draw the critical balance. So on one hand, to be quite honest with you, I won't say let's flush out the old people entirely. Because there's some level of, there's no amount of money you can pay for experience. So in some cases, in some cases, we need that experience. We need some of that culture, like you said, that we need to pass down. Cultures are still relevant. They're still useful. They're still valuable in the workplace. However, this is a personal experience. I run a marketing firm and 90% of our staff are GenZ. I have personally have to unlearn a lot of things and relearn their language, relearn their culture. Because I mean, like they say culture is strategy for breakfast. That's one of my favorite quotes as a matter of fact. I'm so big on culture. But it starts from the company organization asking themselves the question, what is our vision? What do we want to achieve? I say to my clients, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is not evolve. You know the Blackberry story, you know? They said, oh, you know, we did nothing wrong. Problem is you did nothing. When everybody was moving, you were not moving, you stayed where you were. So companies, organizations must learn how to evolve. And part of evolving is including a younger generation into your plan. So what you said about strategy. I mean, this is what I would talk. It will shock you what insights a 14-year-old and 18-year-old would have on your overall strategy. So you think you have this great strategy going forward. You're ready to go to markets. And then this 18-year-old just come and tell you, what if you, you know, just tweak this thing and just changes everything. So I think it's achieving the balance. You know, getting experience, you know, is important. But also getting the younger people, you know, fresh ideas with fresh insights. But also very important, there's also training that is required. I know how much you have to do in terms of something as simple as just send a text when you're running late. You know, you can't deliver this on time. Just say in advance, don't wait for me to ask you. You know, so there are things that, you know, and discipline is important as well. You know, we can't throw that away. Thank you very much. I believe we are all, I think the older generation, whether it's Baby Boomers or Gen X, they are like people hocking, still hocking the floppy disk. Or at best the, what do you call it? Is this CDs? No, no, no, no. Yeah, maybe they see this. But there's a generation that is hocking, you know, soft music. So we need to come to that place where we synergize, all right? So going forward for that, Tonya is pointing out a rising crisis. And we'll be back with Tonya after the break.